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NILC Blog for 21st Century Nurses

Nursing Informatics Summer Reading Suggestions

By June Kaminski, RN MSN PhD(c)

Summer is often viewed as a time for more leisure, perhaps due to longer warm days, balmy evenings, and for some – vacation time. It is often a season where people look for good books to read to help to wile away the summer hours in a productive way. 2017 has been a prolific year for nursing informatics publications, which has enabled me to compile a hot-off-the-press list of suggested readings in this area.

Health Informatics: An Interprofessional Approach

Two eminent informatics experts, Ramona Nelson and Nancy Staggers, published the first book on this suggested reading list in January 2017 for Mosby Publishing. This is actually the second edition of their well-respected book and offers insightful chapters that ground the reader in this ever-evolving field. As outlined by the publisher, “Concise coverage includes information systems and applications such as electronic health records, clinical decision support, telehealth, ePatients, and social media tools, as well as system implementation. New to this edition are topics including data science and analytics, mHealth, principles of project management, and contract negotiations”.

The second book on my recommended summer reading list is the fourth edition of an insightful book, by Dee McGonigle (founding OJNI Editor in Chief) and Kathleen Mastrian (our current OJNI Senior Managing Editor) for Jones and Barlett Publishing. I also wrote Chapter 3 of the book.

The book is a great choice for practicing nurses as well as nursing education. As the J&B Learning site describes, it “teaches nursing students the history of healthcare informatics, current issues, basic informatics concepts, and health information management applications. The text addresses basic through complex concepts to target the needs of the novice through innovator. The text takes the reader from the building blocks of informatics through complicated topics such as data mining, bioinformatics, and system development. The content is enhanced through its grounding in the Foundation of Knowledge Model founded by the authors”.

This book is available as either an e-book (Kindle, Google Play, Vital Source) or as a paperback through J & B Learning at

The third book on my summer list is due to be launched on July 22 of this year, is the first edition, and edited by five well-known informatics experts, Connie White Delaney, Charlotte A. Weaver, Judith Warren, Tom Clancy and Roy Simpson for Springer Publishing.

This book is timely since data analytics are beginning to impact the way we manage health-related data and information to optimize healthcare processes and move towards personalized health care. As the Springer description details, “This text reflects how the learning health system infrastructure is maturing, and being advanced by health information exchanges (HIEs) with multiple organizations blending their data, or enabling distributed computing. It educates the readers on the evolution of knowledge discovery methods that span qualitative as well as quantitative data mining, including the expanse of data visualization capacities, are enabling sophisticated discovery. New opportunities for nursing and call for new skills in research methodologies are being further enabled by new partnerships spanning all sectors”.

The book by White Delaney, Weaver, Warren, Clancy and Simpson is available as an e-book or hard cover book through Springer at:

Dawna Martich, wrote the fourth recommended book for summer reading, also for Springer Publishing. Impressive aspects of this book include the theoretical yet practical approach. Background, context, and practical how-tos are a consistent feature across all 27 chapters. These chapters are clustered into four sections, with ready-to-use guidance on how to assess and care for clients through telehealth technologies. The book is available as a 410-page, 15.2 x 22.9 cm soft-cover book with access to a pdf sample chapter and overview.